These are the words come from the hottest newcomer in the game today named Aubrey “Drake” Graham. JayZ have takened a similar route by ignoring jabs from 50 Cent, Game, Beans and others while keeping it subliminal. But Drake’s line is an example of the direction that many rappers are taking these days.

T.I. has for years boldly labeled himself as the King of the South to no response from heavyweights such as Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Young Jeezy, and others. Lil Wayne has proclaimed himself the Best Rapper Alive and he has yet to answer any of the jabs or challenges from competitors that wanted to challenge his claim of stake. You have guys like Soulja Boy calling themselves the hottest rapper in the game and going as far as to threat to chop any rappers head off with a guillotine. The game is becoming real unorganized. The top dogs are ducking competition and a lot of mediocre rappers are making challenges as if their really that nice lyrically and it resulted to a lot of silly beefs that people could careless about(Soulja Boy and the New Boyz). Everything is a mess and what are the results? A lot of weak music being released and Hip Hop becoming more complacent by the day. But How did such a competitive artform become so soft all of a sudden? Allow me to elaborate

The Puff Daddy Factor

I remember back when Tupac and Biggie got killed, Rap became this way. Everybody was on the Puff Daddy bandwagon, Nobody wanted problems and everybody wanted to be fake to one another, chill and make money. Anybody that wanted to battle or diss was automatically dismissed as a “hater” or somebody that’s jealous. Although compared to today, The Puffy Shiny Suit era was golden. A lot of hardcore hip hoppers including myself despised it. The aggressive content that made the culture thrive was replaced with tired braggerious rhymes about big balling, money, champagne and girls. It seemed to be the only type of music being played and lets not forget the murders of Biggie and Tupac gave rappers huge trepidadtions.The Puff Daddy Campaign did a magnificent drop of reprogramming the minds of the fans and the game alike with this and it remained like this for many years until battles such as 2001-2002 explosion which featured battles from all over and a lot of good music were being made.

The 50 Cent era

50 Cent took the competition to the next level. His music was wildly aggressive, catchy, and catching fire with many. Guys like Ja Rule had to get out of dropping bubble gum music and get back gritty to get back at 50. The same way his other adversaries such as Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Game and Nas. They couldnt drop any pop records, They knew 50 was a major problem so they had no choice but to come with hard records or hard albums and like before. Competition was increased and the fans was blessed with good music. Battles have even brought out the best of rappers such as Common Sense and Nelly who never battled in their lives ended up going harder on the mic than before. Their vendettas with Ice Cube and KRS-One respectably have brought the best out of them.

The current era

Today with 50 Cent dying out, It seems that this is the direction the game is going once again. Theres nothing wrong with wanting to do that if that isn’t your lane but what these newcomers like Drake, Nicki Minaji, Kid Cudi, and others fail to understand is that Hip Hop is a BLOODSPORT. This is a competitive game here and the game thrives off competition. This form of competition saved Nas’s career from fading into irrelevancy. I’m not talking about competition in just a beefing aspect but competition as in trying to come with the better verse or trying to outdo your rhyming partner or dropping a verse better than everybody on the track with you. You could hear that competitive nature on the track The What featuring Biggie and Method Man. This track was a perfect example of competition and one emcee trying to out rhyme another.

The problem with a lot of these rappers and their fans is that these rappers want to label themselves shit. They want that proper champion style treatment without putting in major work. They want respect as one of the best out, They want to be respected and recognized as the hottest or the nicest but they don’t want to compete or their afraid too. To me that a slap in the face to the culture itself because by then the game would be full of nothing but Paper Champions and thats whats going on today.

Michael Jordan couldn’t go around calling himself the greatest Basketball Player of all time, He had to prove it and he did it by winning six championships. Floyd Mayweather couldn’t call himself the best boxer of his era if he didn’t take a challenge or didn’t fight. He had to prove that he can back up his talk and he’s done that many times. Hell Busy Bee one of the first battlers from the early 80s was acting like He was the Muhammad Ali of the battle Circuit and he had to prove it by winning hundreds of battles.

Its time for these new jacks and all of these cats talking that big talk to put up, shut up, and stop complaining because the Game was like that before you came in and its gonna continue to be like this on your way out the door. Think of how much good music was made from 94-97 when Bad Boy(Mainly Biggie) was going at it with the Wu Tang Clan, Nas, Jeru Da Damaja, Boot Camp Click and even 2Pac. Each artist involved in the issue knew they couldn’t come out with no weak, bubble gum pop music so they had to bring their A Game within every track and that’s how we got blessed with so much classic hip hop music from that era.

So my message to Nicki Minaji is if you want to be recognized as that bad bitch? Take the crown from Lil Kim and shut her up! Dont go leaving messages on Twitter, Dont do You Tube videos acting like you’re high and mighty, No sly interviews because all of that is corny. Get in the booth and p rove that you deserve to be in this game and wreck Kim lyrically like how it should be done so you can solidify your spot.

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About Vic Da Rula

What more can I say? I enjoy Hip Hop, Sports, and living the good life!
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3 Responses to You New Rappers need to COMPETE!

Nicki Minaj is a robot now, i saw some of her old vids up to now and thought what the heck happened? She comes off as a brainwashed puppet. Her music is commercialized. I would love to hear a great rap battle between two females one that is actually based of being a good lyricist rather than how good they are in bed or how much money they have, or how often they get their hair and nails done! I want some good music. But this all goes back to supply and demand and unfortunately the young people of this generation don’t demand quality music so the record companies supply us with crap!

Its good seeing you Courtney! You make some valid points and Im glad you found time to check me out . And its also the fact that these new jacks dont wanna apply a effort to putting out a dope 16 bars but are content of being average or being mediocre. But yet they want that JayZ, Biggie, Nas, Pac respect!